Dutch Media & Israel: No Honest Reporting

HonestReporting has been monitoring English language media for over a decade. But what about the non-English language media in countries beyond the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa?

In addition to our Spanish language affiliate, ReporteHonesto, we are in regular contact with a number of media monitoring organizations in countries around the world.

Here, in a guest commentary, Yochanan Visser takes a look at the state of the Dutch media.

The Dutch media pays excessive attention to Israel. The average Dutch newspaper publishes more news items regarding the situation in Israel than about any other country in the world.

Most of those reports, however, are not about Israel, but about the Palestinians.

This type of coverage guarantees that news about the real Israel is structurally being ignored.

As a result the average Dutchman does not know, for example, that Israel is a world leader in the field of medical inventions, water recycling, high tech, agriculture technology and the integration of immigrants.

No Dutchman reads in the Dutch media about the thousands of Palestinian patients, or patients from Arab countries, treated in Israeli hospitals every year.

A story like the one about Dr. Adi Weissbuch of the Kaplan Medical Centre in Rehovot, who recently saved the life of a pregnant Iranian woman, will never be published in the average Dutch newspaper.

Some members of the Dutch media are accomplices in delegitimizing and demonizing Israel.

The best example is the free daily De Pers (The Press); a paper read by a quarter of a million Dutchmen.

‘De Pers’ doesn’t hesitate to publish libels against Israel and as a rule refuses to correct false claims or lies.

As an unwritten rule, no Dutch newspaper will publish articles which criticize other members of the media. Rebuttals of reports which contain false claims are seldom publicized, nor is the right of reply properly applied.

Some papers like NRC (the Dutch equivalent of The Guardian) refuse to publish pro-Israel op-eds as a matter of policy.

The bias in the Dutch media reporting is best shown by the coverage of events in the West Bank. Balanced reports about the Jews living in that area are almost absent. Generally the word ‘colonist’ is used for the Israeli’s living in the West Bank and many news reports show generalization and demonization.

As a result, some half million Israeli Jews have basically been stripped of any humanity. Only in extremely rare cases is attention given to the subject of every-day life in the West Bank such as the fact that Jews work together with Arabs in places like the Rami Levy supermarket at the Gush Etzion junction.

Dutchmen only hear about the suffering and the poverty among Palestinians. Where were the reports in the Dutch press about the PA decision to build houses and to pay up to 5000 USD to the terrorists who recently were released during the Shalit-deal?

But that’s not all. News about the Palestinians is also subject to selection. Positive news is being ignored, as is negative news about the Palestinians. Most Dutch media tend to publish this type of news only when they can connect it to a negative image of Israel.

In addition many Dutch news reports about the West Bank are exclusively based on Palestinian sources and pro-Palestinian NGOs.

Reports which are based on information provided by persons or organizations with an obvious political agenda guarantee incorrect and incomplete reporting.

This fact is not unique to the Netherlands: it is a global pattern.

Examples

Some recent examples show the extent of the bias in Dutch media.

On November 2 the Dutch daily “De Volkskrant” published an article written by Rolf Bos, a junior reporter in Israel, titled “A Palestinian can forget about his own home”.

In the article Bos wrote about the situation of Palestinian Arabs in East-Jerusalem.

Halper is known for his support for the Free Gaza movement and boycott actions (BDS) against Israel.

He also supports the so-called “one state solution”; which basically means the end of the Jewish state of Israel. The end result was an article filled with lies and stereotypes.

Bos claimed he had asked the Jerusalem municipality for a reaction. However Stephan Miller, a spokesman for the mayor of Jerusalem, stated that the municipality never received such a request.

If Bos had made an effort to do some research or to interview all parties involved, he would undoubtedly have discovered that there is another story to tell about the situation of the Arabs in East Jerusalem.

A recent study of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) showed that a large number of East Jerusalem Arabs prefer to remain under Israeli governance. Furthermore, an even larger number claimed to be satisfied with their standard of living, which is indeed higher than in many other Arab countries or in the areas controlled by the PA.

False claims

Here is one of the claims in Bos’s article:

“Whereas in Jewish districts in Israeli occupied parts of East-Jerusalem, construction is in full swing, Palestinians are denied to build legally in that part of the city”

Refusal to build legally?

The number of delivered construction permits for existing Arab districts in East-Jerusalem over 2007 and 2008 show a totally different picture:

2007

· Kalandia, Atarot, Bet Hanina 78

· Shafuat, Anata 84

· Ishwaja, A- Toer, A-Sawana, Wadi El Goz 16

· Sheikh Jarrah, Moshava Amerikanit, Bab El Zahara 4

· Deir Abu Tor, Ras al Amud, Chirbat Beit Zahur 11

· Jamel Mugaber, Arav A-Swahara, Tzur Baher, Bet Tsafafa South 182

2008

· The Old City – Muslim Quarter 1

· Kalandia, Atarot, Bet Hanina 81

· Shafuat, Anata 91

· Ishwaja, A- Tur, A-Sawana, Wadi El Goz 48

· Sheikh Jarrah, Moshava Amerikanit, Bab El Zahara 11

· Deir Abu Tor, Ras al Amud, Beit Zahur 60

· Jamel Mugaber, Arav A-Swahara, Tzur Baher; Bet Tsafafa South 170

Stephan Miller wrote that in 2010 some 1000 Arabs from East Jerusalem registered new apartments or dwellings with the municipality.

Demolitions

Another claim in the article concerned house demolitions in East Jerusalem.

De Volkskrant: “widescale demolishing of houses is taking place in Jerusalem”.

Stephan Miller: “zero took place in 2011 so far”.

Then there was this claim:

“behind all this, there is a master plan to ‘judaise’ the whole of Jerusalem. The goal is to get a proportion of 70% Jews, 30% Palestinians. The meter stands on 67/33”.

The reality is quite different. Figures show that the Arab population of Jerusalem has grown constantly since 1967. Statistics also show that the number of Arabs has increased in comparison to the Jewish population. In 1967 the percentage of Arabs was 25.8% of the total population of Jerusalem. By 2009 it had increased to 35.7%.

De Pers

The free Dutch daily ‘De Pers’ is a serial offender when it comes to distortions and lies in its Israel reporting.

Take for example science-editor Marcel Hulspas, who claimed the following when writing about the Arab countries:

“Most likely you cannot register ( in the Arab countries) as a non-believer at municipality, birth, marriage and death registers in those countries, but that is also impossible in democratic Israel. In the eyes of the state, everyone is forced to be Jewish.”

Forced to be Jewish? Aside from the fact that more than 1,000,000 Israeli citizens are registered as Muslim, Christian or Baha’i, Jews can also register as non-Jews if they wish to do so.

De Pers’ Israel correspondent Eva Ludemann is not even able to write a journalistic report about Israel. All of her articles are libelous.

Over the last month she published two articles which were rife with distortions and outright lies. One of these articles dealt with the position of women in Israeli society. Ludemann presented a picture in which all women in Israel are ultra-orthodox and subordinate to men.

When confronted with the facts, the apparently angry editor of De Pers wrote he was fed up with the criticism about every ‘De Pers’ article which pictures Israel in a negative way. He refused to grant the right of reply when a detailed rebuttal of the article was submitted.

Pattern

These are just two examples of newspaper articles which have appeared in the Dutch media over the last month.

Generally speaking one can say there are only some small news outlets such as the Christian daily ‘Reformatorisch Dagblad’ and the weekly magazine ‘Elsevier’, which are making an effort to present the correct and complete story about Israel.

Dutch TV

The same pattern can be seen on the Dutch television. The Israeli side of the story is frequently being ignored and it is possible to determine the political views of editors by noting which guest commentators are invited toappear on programs.

For example on October 18th the program “Nieuwsuur” (News Hour) invited ex-prime minister Dries Van Agt, who is known to be a fierce opponent of Israel. He was supposed to give his comment on the release of Gilad Shalit. Predictably Van Agt ended up in a diatribe against the Israeli ‘blockade’ of Gaza.

Documentary programs on Dutch TV show the same bias.

Kees Schaap who is one of the editors of the documentary program ‘Zembla’, wrote to us in 2009 stating that his intention was not to inform the public about the facts, but about the opinion of the editor. His remarks came after the publication of a detailed rebuttal of false claims made in a documentary’ No money for Gaza’.

NOS news

The Dutch state-funded NOS news show has been the subject of two detailed reports concerning the bias in its Israel reporting. Recently NOS finally acted to correct the one sided focus on Israel and the absence of any context in its reporting about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Two new Middle East correspondents were added to the news desk, but the bias continues.

Last year, on the day Lebanese soldiers shot dead an Israeli colonel in a cross border attack, NOS reporter Van Hoorn decided that the opening of a new cinema in Jenin was the real scoop of the day. As a result, the NOS report about the cross border attack was based on an Al Jazeera report of the event.

In the middle of November 2011, the NOS news site ran a story about comments by Israeli minister of defense Ehud Barak concerning the explosion at an Iranian rocket base. Barak made the comments on Israel Army Radio (Galatz). The NOS report quoted Barak as saying that “Israel would not shed one tear about such explosions”. When confronted with the audio recording of Barak’s comments, which clearly proved he never said such a thing, NOS rectified the report.

A few days later NOS ‘Nieuwsuur’ (News Hour) broadcasted another report about Iran.

Thomas Erdbrink, the NOS correspondent in Iran, was asked whether people in Teheran take an eventual Israeli attack seriously.

His answer was: “Well, not really seriously. After all since 1992 Israel has threatened to attack Iran, for whatever kind of reason”.

Nobody at the studio thought about asking Erdbrink if was not actually the other way round. After all, who’s threatening who with ‘wiping them off the map’?

Another report by ‘Nieuwsuur’ on Wednesday November 9th, titled ‘American green light’ reported mainly about the crisis between Israel and Iran. The Iranian ambassador in The Hague was interviewed and even got the chance to threaten Israel. A reply from an Israeli diplomat in The Hague never made it into the program.

Bashing

The Dutch government has already indicated that it aims to stop the so-called ‘Israel-bashing’ in the Netherlands, most probably because the government realizes that it can lead to dangerous excesses.

To understand this, one only needs to look at what is taking place in Iran and other Arab countries in this regard.

It is high time that Dutch media displayed the same sense of responsibility.

Applying the normal journalistic standards to the news coverage about Israel would be a good start.

Yochanan Visser is director of Missing Peace Information, an Israeli public diplomacy organization operating in The Netherlands and Belgium. He is a frequent contributor to the main Dutch paper De Volkskrant and for several other media outlets in The Netherlands.

It’s THE classic ‘oh us poor jews’ story, allways putting themselves in the underdog position, when there’s really nothing going on. Dutch media has allways been pro-Israël but this writer seems to think that the truth should not be published if it’s not in Jewish best interest. Oh you poor, poor Jews

Holland is it seems just as disgusting, antisemitic and judging by some of the commenters here Nazi-like, like its southern neighbour, “Belgium”. That’s a colossal shame. I am disgusted and dismayed by these manipulative, downright mean, ultra-malicious Aryan barbarians. Those mentioning its deeds during the German occupation in WWII are perfectly right. These are by and large a useless, nasty dumb people. And I doubt that there are any more greedy pigs among all pEuropeans. They are infamously famous the world over for worshipping money and they would sell their own mothers if they could “sparen” $ 5 on anything, be that a simple shopping or a car, whatever…Sorry for my harsh words, but they have vastly deserved it.

Gabor, in defending Israel and the Jewish people you becomes overwhelmed by hatred toward the Dutch people as a whole, when a large part of the population has always vigorously upported the Jewish nation and will continue to do so.
What you are doing is just as wrong as the biased reporting of the mass media in the Netherlands. Be careful about what you write and don’t judge too quickly a people that you hardly know.

The leaders of the west today will go down in history as making Chamberlin look insightful. That is if true history will be allowed by the new world leaders, Muslim fanatics. Enjoy your last days of freedom say goodbye to the churches, and temples they will be replaced with Mosques

it has been noted lately that official Dutch groups visiting Israel have refrained from visiting Yad VaShem’ even though it is always on the itinery. Is this related to their poor showing as a nation during world war 2, when the percentage of Dutch Jews sent to the gas chambers came percentage- wise’ a close second to Poland.

You’re a bit hypocritical if you want fair publishing of information because instead of simplying writing a Dutch person you assume only men read the newspapers. Why do you use sexist language such as ‘Dutchmen’ and ‘Dutchman’ while implying the average Dutch media is racist? Double standards. I think I see where you are coming from…..

Why pile on the Dutch. The media in most of the world, including western Europe displays an anti-seitic bias. I just finished reading in a couple of UK papers that Israel “isn’t” a democracy. Two thousand years of discrimination, murder and lies don’t die quietly. On the other hand the Dutch had the highest per capita enlistment in the Waffen SS.

The mainstream media here in Australia is totally sold out to the socialist vandals. The left-wing government is out to smash our economy as fast as they possibly can, yet most of the population just thinks this mess is a case of incompetence and some media bias!!? I know the ten Booms were truly heroic, at least 2 of them died in the concentration camp, many other Dutch died trying to protect the hunted jews. It was similar in the other christian countries in Europe. Sadly most of the population in those same countries have turned their backs on Jesus Christ, and things are very different.

It is a sad fact that the situation has changed in Hollland over the last 66 years since World War II. Heroic individuals like the Tenbooms helped the Jews and cared about Israel. Now that does not appear to be the case

I have read the contributions of Yochanan in “De Volkskrant” and they are always very factual and to the point. The reactions to them, in the forum, are mainly very hateful and addres the writer, instead of the article and question many times Israel’s right to exist. Anyone who dares to refute those comments is portrait as somebody from a “well-oiled propaganda machine”. The word “hasbara” is used as something dirty. In discussions on forums in Holland I have been accused of being a whole “hasbara team” and that I am not one person. I took it as a compliment. The sad thing is that telling the facts as they are does not help change the views of the people, who have made up their mind.

I know that the news in Holland is only one-sided.
But they are always one-sided.

I remember the genocide in Rwanda and the Dutch started a campaign for the refugees in Goma.
They lied to the public as these people were the killers of the 1 million death within 100 days in Rwanda. They still will not hear the stories of the victims (Tutsi’s) only the stories of the killers (Hutu’s)
I also remember the one-sided stories against Rhodesia, and when I went there, it was 180º different. But nobody believed me as they read the newspapers and watched the television.
They will not believe that they are reading or seeing lies.
South Africa, the same story, the genocide at the moment on Afrikaner farmers is total ignored.
IF a farmer shoots a intruder dead….then it will be front page news.

Israel is, I am afraid, an other victim of the media and I am sorry. But you have the internet now, which was not there in the case of Rhodesia.

its been a long time since the holocost. enough so that the right wing perverts can come out from under the rock. we are lucky to have a strong israel, if we didnt, they would be rounding us up again. From here on, you can expect increased propaganda from all countries.its all about oil.

“its been a long time since the holocost. enough so that the right wing perverts can come out from under the rock”
Believing that the right wing perverts shows how much we are influenced by the media. If you will look throughout history, the socialist are the ones who are biased i.e In Germany -Hitler get into power through the socialist party, In the States (you will be probably surprised) but the Democratic Party was the one that supported the KKK (when African American received the right of voting, they decided they are better off moving to the African American side).
The media reporters are socialists, and that’s why they “report” on right wing.
Yes, there are some lunatic extremist, however, most of the bias comes from the socialist.

Please note: Fascism, including National Socialism, evolved from Marxism. To paint fascism as a right-wing movement is a myth created by the Left to distance themselves from the fact that they share the most abhorrent beliefs. In fact, contemporary liberalism is significantly more radical in most respects. They also fail to note the difference between classical liberalism (capitalism) and anti-capitalist neo-Liberalism, in order to paint the likes of Mussolini’s recorded criticisms as anti-socialist, which is simply the opposite of the truth. And they point to the Nazi persecution of Marxists to paint the Nazis as extreme rightists, yet both Marxists and Nazis are cut from the same extreme leftist cloth. The Nazis simply persecuted a competitive power-seeking group. One only has to examine how similar the realities of the Nazi and Soviet states were. And today, there are plenty of examples of political parties that are supposedly from the same “side” of the political spectrum that cannot form coalitions with each other and are even enemies.

Furthermore, much of the fascist movement leadership in the 1920’s-30’s were leaders in the feminist/women’s rights movement. In Britain, for instance, many of the leaders of the Suffragette movement went on to be founding members of fascist parties and held senior/leading positions in those parties. And, the contemporary Green movement is also directly related to/derived from Nazism. Key Green texts remain those written by Nazis, so-called former Nazis, and those expounding such writings. These are facts that can be pretty easily checked via Google searches.

Pity more people don’t understand why the Left is generally so anti-Semitic. Pity more people don’t understand why the Nazis were so antisemitic, which was more to do with seeing Jews as an ‘anti-Green’ people than the Roman- and Church-derived, so-called classical anti-Semitism. Today, all of the above combines with blaming Jews for wanting their land back from the colonizing Arabs, for fighting back and wanting to fight back when attacked or threatened, for wanting to live in peace and security like other nations, and simply hindering free trade with their oil-rich Muslim client states, which is pushing up all the costs of living to unsustainable levels.

And the last thing they want is to replace their reliance on Muslim-held resources for reliance on Jewish technologies, which is why there is a general media blackout on reporting Israel’s light unto the nations, and general media demonization/delegitimization of all things Israeli.

Unfortunately, it’s all true. I don’t understand the media, they are supposed to give unbiased news and not take sides. Every time there’s a discussion about Israel, I can just see from the reactions that people only read/see news from the Palestinian side.When I once participated in a discussion, I was threatened to be killed. why? Because I questioned if the Palestinians truly want peace..

Mmmmmmm something smells here – sound like the table turned here – jewish own media or newspaper do the same thing – never publish anything bad about themself and yet they are the worse cult on face of earth that don’t give a damn about non-jewish blood

As a result of British media bias I now write six blogs a week for the http://www.christiansforzion.com website setting out the truth as I see it about Israel. Pastor Jack Van Der Tang, of The Hague, Netherlands, is also a contributor to the website

I wish it was only the Dutch with anti Israeli comments,it’s all over Europe,in England where sharia law are taking over some courts with the BBC Reuters and The Gardian,in France it Le Monde with its so called anti Israel hiding antisemitism,in Norway and Sweden where some jews have to hide in Germany with its rise of Nazis,in Spain where some Muslims have taken over some towns and swear to come back after they left in the 1600 and right here at home where some of Obama’s administration officials are making anti Israeli comments,(no names,pick your own).
I wish that Israeli propaganda would be a little stronger and start refuting some of those comments.

I was fired because they thought I was jewish. During 4 years I was harrassed with Hitler salutes and antisemitic Remarcs The Union FNV of which I was a member for years supported the antisemitc company (COPEX AIR – Schiphol) Justice did not work for me. politicians and media are not interested. That is why I have made a website about it.
The FNV claims that Israel should disapear nd also the jewish people. “The fact that you are born into a jewish family, does not mean that you have to live as a jew” They lso believe that 9-11 happened becuse of the jews. The roblems in Sirya are because of Israel’s behaviour.

I know that the Dutch media are completely dishonest about Israël. That’s not new to me. They are afraid to be honest about the moslims here and in the world+ about the Palestians and they never ever will report any good or truth about Israël. That’s a fact,not a fantasy. And I am ashamed about that so much.I also read a lot of lies.
The Israeli side of story’s is never been asked or told.I know.I always ask by myself: “what is wrong with all this people”since the truth is the truth and it’s not important to me what the nationality is of the people in the first place, wrong is wrong and right is right. Didn’t we learn a lesson?No we didn’t.
So I only can say that I pray for the peace of Israel and send honest reporting emails to some people I know.I am ashamed about the media here and I don’t know why they are liars, may be this is the best way to make money or to be populair, what ever.In any case: they are deaf and blind for a reason and are liars..
G’d bless you.
Ellen